


Hearts and Bodies

by Mitsuhachi



Series: Monster's Heart [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Bodies and Body Parts, Community: kink_bingo, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:23:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mitsuhachi/pseuds/Mitsuhachi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaara considers his own sexuality, what there is of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts and Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for brief mentions of incest. Also, please note: Gaara is kinda messed up in the head, and he doesn't always have a very healthy self-image. The author would like to make very clear that being ace is perfectly normal and ok.

Naruto has a “girlfriend”.

And a “boyfriend”.

Gaara turns the barely-readable letter around in his hands. It doesn’t surprise him, exactly—he’d known for years that the Uchiha and that woman were Naruto’s Important People. There are bonds there that go deep, unbreakable and the source of great strength. Gaara, too, had been able to fight more tenaciously, more sanely, since he’d built bonds with his family and with Suna. But that’s not precisely what’s going on here. Naruto has gone further than that, his bonds have changed; he’s publicly taken his Important People as lovers.

Gaara finds his fingers starting to clench on the piece of paper and very deliberately sets it down on his desk. Naruto…Naruto understood, yes, but he always had been rather more human than monster. And it isn’t as if the bond they share is the one to have changed. But Gaara still finds himself…uncomfortable. He reads through the small letter again and recognizes that the pain is worse when he does so. Gaara doesn’t understand how Naruto can do it.

He thinks about the Uchiha. The boy had been strong enough, though brittle, but the man has finally grown into his determination, tempered by loss and regret. He still has those eyes, feral and full of pain, but he’s learned how to bend with it: it won’t break him. Gaara will admit that his strength is compelling. Is that enough?

He is handsome enough, so far as Gaara could tell by the humans’ responses to him. He has the kind of bone-pale skin that would have made him exotic in Suna (Gaara never steps outside without the Sand Armor, and even he is darker skinned than the Uchiha), stretched over muscles that speak of years of ten-hours-a-day training. Gaara seems to remember that he had unusually long legs for a man, rangy and deceptively thin like his teacher, and that the curve of the strong calf muscles made them seem almost womanly.  
The Uchiha’s hands are rough with kunai calluses and tiny scars on the tips of the fingers from throwing shuriken. One finger doesn’t quite bend right after he’d broken it as a child, though he’s learned to compensate for it when he aims.

Gaara looks down at his own body. He’s been training recently with Lee and with Temari in taijutsu, as a fallback option in case he needs the Sand for something other than defense, although it’s difficult to begin as an adult. But his body is still more or less as it has always been: rather small—he still stands only shoulder height on most Shinobi—and soft with the kind of childish smoothness that comes from never having been touched. He can’t picture it next to the Uchiha’s, muscle and blood and bone pressed together like he’s seen humans do sometimes. The Uchiha’s body is an admirable weapon, one he’s finally tempered his spirit to match, but Gaara feels no personal want when he thinks of it.

So he thinks of the woman. She’d been pathetic when they first met, too weak even for killing out of contempt. And yet, somehow in the past several years, she’s become respectably strong: even Kankuro flinches when she threatens a punch, and Temari—who approves of no one—is pleased when they are able to spar. And she’s become devious enough to manage both the Uchiha and Naruto, neither of whom he would have expected to take directions from anyone. Gaara didn’t think her level of strength was high enough really to be Hokage, but it wouldn’t have surprised him either to learn she was being groomed as Tsunande’s successor.

Her body is softer in shape than his or the Uchiha’s, smooth curves hiding the rough muscle underneath. In many ways, her body reminds him of his own more than the Uchiha’s does: her techniques are mainly chakra-based, like his, in ways that don’t leave calluses or bulky muscles. Their bodies are small and smooth; they do not show their real power in appearances. She has only the single scar—the self-inflicted one from when she and Naruto had taken their third back from Orochimaru. Gaara considers that the males of Naruto’s team have always protected her, are their own kind of “absolute defense”. Her breasts are smallish, in comparison to those of most adult human females, but he’s heard Temari sympathize with kunoichi who had to try and bind large breasts enough that he rather approves of this. Her hands are small and quick and deft like Kankuro’s from the study of delicate chakra manipulations. She always smells faintly of wet forest-flowers and the ozone-sharp tang of medical chakra.

But he can’t picture his hands touching her small waist, can’t begin to imagine a use for that deceptively delicate body outside of the context of missions, fighting, command. He recalls that Naruto has told him that she likes to eat sweet dango. It doesn’t mean anything to him though, is too far outside his realm of experience. It doesn’t have anything to do with him.

He slides a hand down his own face, a backwards mimicry of a gesture he’s seen humans make to each other, and considers that perhaps a sexual response requires its objects to already be one’s Important People. He doesn’t think so, from the things he’s heard and seen—Suna has a brothel, controlled by the village for security, and he’s relatively certain most of the shinobi who go there don’t actually know the employees. Still, perhaps monsters are different.

He tries to imagine Kankuro pressing their lips together the way he’s seen civilian couples do, the heat of his breath and the taste of his paint. He tries to imagine putting his hands on Temari’s small breasts, what kind of sounds she might make if they were to—but again, no. All he can do is remember Kankuro’s warm hand silent and encouraging on his shoulder after a difficult council meeting and the sound of Temari shouting at him to get up and try that kick again, dammit, you’re better than that. They are his Important People, give him strength, and he would fight and die to protect them. But the rest…it’s too alien. It isn’t for him.

He doesn’t know how Naruto does it.


End file.
